"She has much more reason to question ours," recollected Hilary, with some amusement; for I never told her my name or address. She does not know a single thing about me.
Which fact, arguing the matter energetic ally two days after, the young lady might not have been so sure of, could she have penetrated the ceiling overhead. In truth, Miss Balquidder, a prudent person, who never did things by halves, and, like most truly generous people, was cautious even in her extremist fits of generosity, at that very moment was sitting in Mrs. Jones's first floor, deliberately discovering every single thing possible to be learned about the Leaf family.
Nevertheless, owing to Selina's indignant pertinacity, Hilary's own hesitation, and a dim hope of a pupil which rose up and faded like the rest, the possible acquaintance lay dormant for two or three weeks; till, alas! the fabulous wolf actually came to the door; and the sisters, after paying their week's rent, looked aghast at one another, not knowing where in the wide world the next week's rent was to come from.
"Thank God, we don't owe any thing: not a penny!" gasped Hilary.
"No; there is comfort in that," said Johanna. And the expression of her folded hands and upward face was not despairing, even though that of the poor widow, when her barrel of meal was gone, and her cruse of oil spent, would hardly have been sadder.
"I am sure we have wasted nothing, and cheated nobody;—surely God will help us."
"I know He will, my child."
And the two sisters, elder and younger, kissed one another, cried a little, and then sat down to consider what was to be done.
Ascott must be told how things were with them. Hitherto they had not troubled him much with their affairs: indeed, he was so little at home. And after some private consultation, both Johanna and Hilary decided that it was wisest to let the lad come and go as he liked; not attempting—as he once indignantly expressed it—"to tie him to their apron strings." For instinctively these maiden ladies felt that with men, and, above all, young men, the only way to bind the wandering heart was to leave it free, except by trying their utmost that home should be always a pleasant home.
It was touching to see their efforts, when Ascott came in of evenings, to enliven for his sake the dull parlor at No. 15. How Johanna put away her mending, and Selina ceased to grumble, and Hilary began her lively chat, that never failed to brighten and amuse the household. Her nephew even sometimes acknowledged that wherever he went, he met nobody so "clever" as Aunt Hilary.